Ramones Cummings met future bandmate Douglas Colvin, later to become
Dee Dee Ramone, in the early 1970s while delivering dry cleaning. They would eat lunch together and discuss their mutual love of bands like
The Stooges and
MC5. Together they went to Manny's Music in New York City in January 1974, where Johnny bought a used blue
Mosrite Ventures II guitar for just over $54 (approximately ). On the same trip, Dee Dee bought a
Danelectro bass. They collaborated with future bandmate Jeffrey Hyman, later to become
Joey Ramone, to form the Ramones with mutual friend Richie Stern initially on bass and Dee Dee also on guitar prior to Stern’s departure due to his musical ineptitude following a handful of rehearsals. Tamás "Thomas" Erdélyi, subsequently known as Tommy Ramone, joined the Ramones in the summer of that year after public auditions failed to produce a satisfactory drummer. The members of the band each used the "Ramone" surname, and Cummings became known as Johnny Ramone. The Ramones played before an audience for the first time on March 30, 1974, at Performance Studios. The band's debut album,
Ramones, was greeted positively by rock critics. The album was not a commercial success, reaching only number 111 on the
Billboard album chart. Their next two albums,
Leave Home and
Rocket to Russia, were released in 1977.
Rocket to Russia was the band's highest-charting album to date, reaching number 49 on the
Billboard 200. In 1978, the band released their fourth studio album,
Road to Ruin. It failed to reach the
Billboard Top 100. However, "
I Wanna Be Sedated", which appeared both on the album and as a single, would become one of the band's best-known songs. The artwork on the album's cover was done by
Punk magazine cofounder
John Holmstrom. After the band's movie debut in
Roger Corman's ''
Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979), producer Phil Spector became interested in the Ramones and produced their 1980 album End of the Century''. There is a long-disputed rumor that during the recording sessions in Los Angeles, Spector held Johnny at gunpoint, forcing him to repeatedly play a riff.
Pleasant Dreams, the band's sixth album, was released in 1981. It continued the trend established by
End of the Century, taking the band further from the raw punk sound of its early records. Johnny would contend in retrospect that this direction was a record company decision, a continued futile attempt to get airplay on American radio.
Subterranean Jungle, produced by
Ritchie Cordell and Glen Kolotkin, was released in 1983. According to
Trouser Press, it brought the band "back to where they once belonged: junky '60s pop adjusted for current tastes", which among other things meant "easing off the breakneck rhythm that was once Ramones dogma." The Ramones performed 2,263 concerts, touring virtually nonstop for 22 years. Recognition of the band's importance grew over the years. The Ramones ranked number 26 in
Rolling Stone magazine's list of the "
100 Greatest Artists of All Time" and number 17 in
VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock". In 2002, the Ramones were ranked the second-greatest band of all time by
Spin, trailing only
The Beatles. On March 18, 2002, the original four members and Tommy's replacement on drums,
Marky Ramone, were inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. In 2011, the group was awarded a
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Acting Alongside his music career, Johnny Ramone appeared in nearly a dozen films (including ''
Rock 'n' Roll High School) and documentaries. He also made television appearances in such shows as The Simpsons (1F01 "Rosebud", 1993) and Space Ghost Coast to Coast'' (Episode 5 "Bobcat"). In 2001, Johnny appeared in an English-language Spanish science fiction film called
Stranded. == Guitar technique ==